Go ahead and admit that you aren't going to read Plato's Republic or Sartre's Being and Nothingness anytime soon, but of course, you are still an intelligent person interested in the big questions. In this very approachable miscellany, Stephen Trombley mines the canon of two and half millennia of Western thought for pithy observations that reflect the seriousness, the joy, and the strangeness of human existence, counterpointing these words of wisdom with episodes—sometimes poignant, sometimes plain odd—from the lives of the great philosophers. Along with sections on friendship, backbiting, haircuts, and insanity, here are Descartes commenting on dogs, Montaigne on bees, and Kierkegaard's thoughts on exercise.